Jane Perrone's organic gardening blog

March 30, 2005

When it comes to time off from work, if I am not away on holiday, there's nothing more satisfying than a bit of houseplant maintenance/allotment work/gardening to keep me out of trouble.

Today the weather can only be described as "filthy", so allotmenteering/gardening is out: instead I decided to repot a 3ft tall Dracaena marginata that had become seriously pot bound. I forgot to mention this problem in my houseplant care notes below, but if a houseplant of yours is looking really sad (wilting or yellowing leaves, not growing at all, looking dull or lifeless) and you've tried everything else, it could be that it's potbound. Of course, there are plants that actually like being potbound: just check your houseplant book to see if this is the case for the plant you're dealing with. If it is, you probably shouldn't repot it.

Potbound means exactly what you might think. The plant's roots - which naturally want to spread out in search of water and nutrients - will eventually become crammed into the confines of the pot, and the plant will start to suffer.

The picture to the right is the dracaena's roots prior to repotting - it was seriously potbound but it was such a tough cookie that it was only just starting to show the signs. The answer is to repot into a container about 5-10% bigger than the current pot, adding new compost (I recommend peat-free houseplant compost).

Make sure you tease out some of the compacted roots so they can spread into the new compost, and water well straight after planting. I'd also recommend covering the surface of the compost will small pebbles or gravel - not only does it look attractive, but it also reduces the risk of mould growing on the soil, which can be an irritant to asthmatics.

March 26, 2005

It's Easter weekend, and I don't have long to post because there is serious garden/allotment pootling to be done.

Actually it's been a bit more productive than that: yesterday I planted 3kg of Epicure potatoes (dates back to 1897, since you ask), while my trusty assistant who prefers to keep a low profile on this blog sowed three types of peas (Karina, Sugar Rae and Norli). Today I've been to the not-so-high-class store known as Wilko (which nevertheless does very cheap gardening stuff), bought 15 8ft bamboo canes destined for various jobs around the allotment, perlite, vermiculite and an agapanthus for one of the raised beds in the garden.

It's now raining, hence the pootle hiatus and the chance to type. And to foment further plans for the two beds in my garden I haven't yet got around to renovating. At the moment I am thinking potager, for one of them at least. Unfortunately I can't find a good web resource in English that explains what a potager is, but if you have rudimentary French this Wikipedia page should be enough to fill you in. It would be a way of creating an area of the garden for herbs and salads that could be picked and eaten immediately, while still being attractive. For the moment, though, those plans are on hold because the spring bulbs on that patch are so gorgeous at the moment that I can't bear to dig them up.

March 25, 2005

As someone with a reputation for knowing a bit about plants,
the most common question I get asked is "why do my houseplants always
die?" - a query often accompanied by a finger's jabbing motion towards a sickly
spider plant, shrivelled cactus or other torture victim.

Below is a "potted" summary of the advice I
usually give people. Of course, every houseplant variety is different, and
generalisations are exactly that - general rules to which there will always be
exceptions. But try to get these bits right, and with any luck your plants will
thrive. Or at least they might die a bit slower.

1. Is it a pot plant or a houseplant?

Important distinction, this. Plants grown in houses fall
into main groups: pot plants, which are grown to be bought, placed in your
house and enjoyed until they die a few weeks or months later (often when they
finish flowering), and houseplants, which should live for several years, with
care and attention. (Think annuals and perennials in the garden, or, if you're
British, Eldorado and EastEnders.) In other words, if you are complaining
because the potted chrysanthemum or poinsettia you bought three months ago is
dead, stop beating yourself up about it: it was MEANT to die.

2. Where the hell are you?

Remember that, climate-wise, your houseplants are fishes out
of water. Most plants we try to keep in the warm, bone-dry air of our luxury
pads come from humid subtropical or tropical parts of the world.

That's not to say you need to water them every day in a
rainforest-style deluge. In fact, the most common reason plants suddenly
collapse is too much water: an underwatered plant will die too, but much more
slowly. As a very general rule, plants need watering in the summer when
the soil about one centimetre below the surface feels only very slightly
damp, preferably before they dry out completely. In the winter, cut the
watering back to about a third of the frequency of the summer (although this
may not be the case if you keep you heating on high throughout the winter).

The other way you can mimic houseplants' natural environment
is by upping the humidity. There are various ways of going about this: either
by grouping the plants together to create a microclimate, or by introducing a
source of humidity by spraying the leaves with water or placing pots on a
gravel tray.

3. It's dark in here ...

This may sound dead obvious, but your plants need light -
natural light. Most light bulbs don't give plants the right kind of light for
them to use in photosynthesis, so a plant in a room with no daylight will feel
as if they're in complete darkness. Again, it varies from plant to plant, but
make sure that your plant has some source of natural light. If you want to know
more, read on here.

4. You've been sold a pup ...

Many of the attractive houseplants sold by your local
supermarket or garden centre are, to the expert eye, like a frisky racehorse
being bought by someone whose equestrian experience is no more extensive than a
donkey derby. It doesn't always follow, but many of the most beautiful and
unusual houseplants are also extremely exacting about their environment: think
J Lo's rider when she is on tour rather than Billy Bragg's.

So if you want to shell out on some new plants that will
make your home look good and thrive without an awful lot of care and attention, avoid
orchids, carnivorous plants, caladiums, crotons, bromeliads, ferns with
delicate leaves, and ivies (often sold by the latin name, Hedera - they're much
better suited to conditions outside) and indoor bonsai. I know that sounds like a big list, but there are plants you can grow that are tough and beautiful. As a rule of thumb, it's hard to go wrong with classics like
the parlour palm, dracaenas, rubber plants, aspidistra (I've always fancied a
variegated one), cacti, succulents and the umbrella plant.

But there's no substitute for spending five minutes with a
houseplant book (this is my bible) checking that you're not about to pick something out that's
more high maintenance than Liz Hurley. This will also advise you whether it
should go in the blazing sunshine of your south-facing windowsill, or in a
cool, shady conservatory.

If you have a houseplant query, just drop me an email or leave a comment (a picture really helps) and I'll try to help: and if I can't, I can probably find someone who can.

March 22, 2005

The new plant, christened Midnight Mystique, marks the finding of one
of horticulture's remaining holy grails, out-romanced in most grower's minds
only by the elusive blue rose. The secret breeding programme, in a world where
rival plant laboratories compete for lucrative sales in garden centres and
through seed and bulb salesmen, involved thousands of cross-breeding trials,
with the "final" phase taking 16 years.

I may be an old fashioned type, but
I am quite satisfied with the lovely blue hyacinths currently brightening up my
garden. And the name Midnight Mystique? Well that's just tacky.

March 20, 2005

It really felt like spring for the first time this weekend: I went
out without a jacket and didn't get cold and for the first time in
months I didn't wear my gloves.

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

Sorry, got a bit overexcited there. It's just that I really hate
winter and I'm delighted that it's almost over, and soon I'll be able
to leave the back door open all day and walk to work (well, the train
station) and home from work in the light, and fire up the barbecue in
the back garden, and lounge about on the grass drinking iced coffee and
reading a magazine.

The arrival of warmer seasons was also in evidence at the allotment:
the soft fruits are all at that delightful just about to burst into
leaf stage, the broad beans are poking themselves through the soil
surface (see pic) and the perpetual spinach and chard suddenly look fresh again
as they put out new leaves.

I dug over the strawberry patch again, removing loads of little
strawberry plantlets that won't fruit but will compete with the bigger
plants; I also dug over an area ready for the potatoes I plan to plant
over Easter.

I made soup out of the third from last of my 2004 squash crop
tonight: they're the toughest of the lot, which is why they've lasted
the longest, so cutting into it was almost impossible. But the soup
should taste ok: it's an old favourite adapted from something I ate at
the wonderful Andrew Edmunds restaurant in London - pumpkin with coconut milk, a bit of ginger and chilli.

From the look of the rhubarb (right), it won't be too long before I'll be able to try out this Nigel Slater recipe from today's Observer magazine.

I got going on the heated propagator front, with various tomato varieties (gardener's delight, san marzano, yellow scotland and brandywine, off the top of my head), green and purple globe artichokes and physalis all off the starter's blocks.

I would have done even more but half of the plastic trays and lids for one of the propagators have gone AWOL, inexplicably. Much gnashing of teeth ensued as I tried to find them, to no avail. The only upside was that in the process of trying to locate the trays, my groovy retro scales were unearthed from their hiding place (not by me, however) and restored to their rightful place in the kitchen. Actually, they're my sister's and yes, Louise, I know they are really yours and you can pick them up whenever you want them ... If anyone can suggest where I might have hidden them, do let me know, because I'm damned if I know.

I've somewhat changed my sowing scheme this year, trying to sow more thinly to avoid having to do too much thinning, and using a soil mix heavy with vermiculite to help retain moisture. It'll be interesting to see how it all works.

March 19, 2005

I got my hands on a copy of gardening literature legend Dr
DG Hessayon's new book this week. It's being billed as a companion book to his
original and best work, the House Plant Expert, (aka 'the bible') which was first published in
1960 and doesn't seem to have been out of print since. It was this book that
helped me choose my first houseplants as a child, and I spent many hours poring
over its pages (yes, I was a bit of a geek as a youngster; some things never
change).

The comforting, if deeply eccentric, typography and layout
of the original are still there, along with a mix of photographs new and old.
In fact some of the images look older than me: there's one of a girl standing
next to a (currently deeply untrendy) specimen swiss cheese plant in a 70s nightmare
of a living room that could pass as the set of Abigail's Party ("I like
Demis Roussos ...").

The book isn't trying to replace the original, which has
been updated with new editions anyway: it's a coda, if you will, covering houseplants
that have only become popular in shops and garden centres in the last few
years, and covering some exotics such as orchids and bromeliads in more depth.
I wouldn't go as far as saying it's a must-buy, but if you're a Hessayon fan
like me, this will complete your library.

Update: forgot to say above that mine's a press copy - the book is out on April 8.

March 16, 2005

A potential answer to the problem of my pink fir apples potatoes' failure to chit comes in the form of an email from reader James. Apparently the trick is to plunge them into complete darkness, only moving them into the light once buds appear, according to James's neighbour.

That, however, will have to wait a couple of days as I am many miles away from my seed potatoes, working in Manchester this week. The PFAs won't know what's hit them when I get back at the weekend though: I can't bear the thought of a potato-free allotment this year ...

March 13, 2005

It seems spending two years living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana had more
effect on my vocabulary than I'd previously thought. On filling this
tiny vase (in reality a shot glass co-opted from my kitchen - don't
worry, there's 11 more for booze) with miniature narcissi from my garden, the precise word that entered my head was "darlin'".

The daffs are at their peak at the moment, and it's a jolly sight after a dreary winter. By cutting a few to bring into the house, it puts a smile on my face every time I catch the blooms - one lot in front of the sink in the kitchen, and the one pictured in the bathroom - out of the corner of my eye.

It's also good to know that no one was exploited growing them.

The industry of growing cut flowers causes misery for poorly paid workers in many developing countries, including Kenya and Colombia. You can search out Fairtrade flowers, but I think I am simply going to try to grow my own and enjoy looking at my houseplants from now on.

The wild cornflowers and sunflowers I grew on the allotment last year were a big hit: this year I'll be branching out with some retro dahlias. They're the next big thing in flower fashion: remember, you heard it here first.